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taaroko · 6 years

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Post-IW MCU Rewatch: Thor: The Dark World

Yay more Thor! (Yes I know this is widely considered to be the worst of the MCU movies and I DO NOT CARE. *hugs entire population of Asgard possessively*)

This prologue is ridiculous. I don’t know if it’s Anthony Hopkins’s inflection or if it’s just a step too far in the high fantasy direction, but it does make me cringe a bit. More showing, less telling! The prologues in the LotR movies were way more interesting than this.

The Dark Elf language also makes me cringe. I am very aware that it’s preposterous to assume that people from different planets speak English, but what’s most important to me is that actors cannot deliver nuanced performances when they are speaking gibberish. At least when it’s real languages, someone can coach them on inflection and stuff, but they really hamstrung Christopher Eccleston by making him say these silly-sounding lines.

Malekith has no imagination if the only thing he could think to do with the Reality Stone was turn stuff into dark matter.

“Benevolent god” indeed. Sending the Chitauri to slaughter people doesn’t really fit that description, sweetie.

Seriously Anthony Hopkins’s delivery is really weird in some places.

Odin is now three for three on children who showed scary genocidal tendencies, so I think there’s a lot of bitterness and feelings of failure behind what he says to Loki. Also Loki’s not showing any remorse at all, even though now would be a great time to explain that he was tortured and manipulated by Thanos. They’re both getting defensive and lashing out instead of engaging in meaningful communication.

Hi Sif! Hi Volstagg! HI THOR! He has such good entrances. Hi Fandral and Hogun! (Even if this is Zachary Levi Fandral with his stupid wig.)

The weapons the raiders are using are really interesting.

Hey I wonder if this Kronan knows Korg.

I love Thor’s smile when all the raiders laugh at his “I accept your surrender.”

*dreamy sigh* Asgard.

HUGIN AND MUNIN! And one actually lands on Odin’s arm! That’s awesome.

Odin ships Thor/Sif. (Me too, Odin.)

Obligatory shirtless Thor scene!

Volstagg and his family! *wibble*

Oh Sif. Rejected. (But Thor’s pretty nice about it.)

Jane is really quite socially awkward, isn’t she? Why did she go on this date?

It says something about how bad of a driver Jane is (hitting Thor, nearly driving off the road) that she would trust Darcy to drive her around (I guess Darcy’s record is slightly better, having only hit Thor once, while they were in the middle of a dust cloud).

“Why’re you calling me?” “I didn’t want to shout.”

Portals! Whee! (Honstly the portal shenanigans are one of the big reasons I love this movie. This crap is so much fun.)

I love the way Darcy wiggles her hand when she says “Gimme your shoe.”

Okay so the Dark Elves are set to wake up if the Aether gets activated? Headcanon time. Judging from all the creepy red lights in their ships, I think they used the Aether to make most of their tech, much like Schmidt did with the Tesseract. So yeah, if the Aether gets activated, their tech would react. That works.

Heimdall’s new armor has an orange stone in the breastplate. I thought he was gonna turn out to be the one who had the Soul Stone, and that it was the source of his infinite sight. ...I’m pretty sure I still like that better than what we ended up with in canon. Also, I only noticed this the other day, but Heimdall’s helmet is shaped the same as Hofund’s hilt, and that’s awesome.

Heee, I love Thor and Heimdall’s chat. I definitely believe that Thor would describe Heimdall as his best friend.

Whoops! Continuity error. Jane should not be in her Asgardian outfit yet. I guess they decided to move this bit to this part of the movie instead of later, but didn’t reshoot it.

Did Thor make this storm or is that just London being London? He does make it stop, I guess.

Sorry guys, Thor already has that dark strand of stuff in his hair; it’s not a Loki memorial braid.

Thor and Darcy’s interactions are always gold.

You sliced off part of that car!

Oh, question answered from before. You CAN see space rushing past from inside the Bifrost. Sweet.

Hi Eir! The Soul Forge is so cool.

Jane takes Odin’s rudeness pretty well. But dang, Odin. I know you ship Thor/Sif, but being mean to the competition is an elementary mistake.

That book is freaking awesome. It’s like the Book of Kells, except the images move and it’s in runes.

Dangit I don’t want the bad guys to be the ones who touch foreheads to show affection!

I really don’t like this look for Frigga. That one-boob breastplate is really weird.

The emotion in Loki’s scene with Frigga’s projection is so great. He wants to sever ties with Odin (or he thinks he does) but he can’t do that without severing ties with Frigga too, and you can see how much it hurts him to say anything that would hurt her. Which he plainly instantly regrets. And it’s the last thing he ever says to her.

Yessss more romantic exposition from Thor.

Hahaha, Jane is so much more shy around Frigga than Odin.

Man the way the Kursed dude kills people is really messed up.

Loki you would not be smiling at this dude if you knew he was going to do much more than cause a bit of mischief.

Thor jumping and grabbing Mjolnir is such a cool shot.

“It’s only because I’ve worried over you that you have survived.” Based on how Odin behaves as soon as she’s dead, that is extremely accurate.

Heimdall is so awesome. Oh, and I love the way the Dark Elves’ ships look almost like they’re made of dragon hide or something. Dragon hide or lava rock. Fantastic design. Fantastic movements.

This movie has so much more of Asgard in it than the first one, which is awesome. Even if it’s mostly getting pummeled by Dark Elves.

Those black hole grenades are freaking terrifying.

Yeah...if Loki hadn’t given that tip about the stairs to the left, the Kursed dude wouldn’t have arrived in time to help Malekith before Frigga finished him off, or before Thor and Odin arrived. :/

Frigga’s funeral is beautiful. The music, however, has been somewhat retroactively ruined by that play in Ragnarok. (Which I adore.)

Even if Loki doesn’t know how much his actions specifically contributed to Frigga’s death, I think he regrets helping the Kursed dude.

Hi Stan!

Dang, Asgardian law is crazy strict if Thor and the Warriors Three are casually talking about being killed by Einherjar if they screw up this plan.

This is so sad, because Loki actually doesn’t betray Thor at any point during this mission. He makes up for it by being incessantly irritating (which is the best stuff in the movie), but he sticks to the plan the whole time. The only one he betrays in this whole movie is Odin.

Okay the dagger/handcuffs trick by Thor is funny and all, but it really doesn’t hold up if you think about it. You’d definitely notice the difference between being handed a dagger and having thick cuffs put on.

Sif is very good at not letting her jealousy show too clearly. And her sword is awesome. Her and Volstagg’s threats to Loki are pretty great.

Peak annoying little brother stuff right here, when they’re in the Dark Elf blade ship. My favorite is “Oh dear. Is she dead?”

So Thor has the “face squashed against glass motif,” and I think Loki has a falling motif. Into the abyss in the first one, out of the ship in this one, and through whatever dimension Doctor Strange trapped him in in Ragnarok.

The flying longboats are so cool.

I love how much Loki likes it whenever Thor gets the better of him with sneakiness. He’s so used to Thor just smashing his way through stuff, so any subtlety he uses (especially when it’s successful against him) is fantastic in his book.

“Ta-dah.”

“What I could do with the power that flows through those veins.” I would love to see what Loki could do with the Aether. He’s already a master of illusions, and the Reality Stone would multiply that by about a thousand. It’d be awesome. And yet he sent it off to Knowhere instead of keeping it (or giving it to Thanos). Just like he kept the Tesseract safe in Asgard’s vault the entire time he was pretending to be Odin. If Loki had really done everything he did in Avengers of his own free will while in his right mind, he would not have gone to such lengths to keep multiple Infinity Stones away from Thanos. Heck, he might even have been the one to commission Stormbreaker from Eitri. I suppose he didn’t use the Stones himself because he knows as well as Thor does how deadly they can be to the wielder, or maybe he knew they’d draw Thanos to him like a beacon.

Thor thinks Loki wants to hurt him because he’s talking about Jane’s mortality, but Loki thinks Thor only cares about Jane and not the fact that their mother just died. They’re so bad at understanding each other.

The bittersweet smiles they exchange after “She wouldn’t want us to fight.”/“Well, she wouldn’t exactly be shocked.” are so painful to watch. They both desperately miss the days before any of this happened, when they were simply brothers, and I think they realize that about each other in this moment. But it’s not enough to fix everything, which is why Thor says “I wish I could trust you” and Loki says “Trust my rage.”

Ian is such a dope.

If a flock of starlings burst up through the ground at my feet like that, I would be scarred for life.

Thor’s plan is awesome. I totally fell for it in the theater. I thought Loki had double-crossed him and chopped his hand off, but they were working together the whole time. I kinda don’t think they let Jane in on it, though. Is the lack of blood on Thor’s arm stump a mistake or a hint that it’s a trick? *rewinds and squints* Ooh, no, it’s because the dagger has a glowy energy field on it! Insta-cauterization! Anyway, this would’ve been the perfect time for Loki to betray Thor for real if he’d wanted to, but he plays along. In part, I think, because he was so impressed with the plan.

Hey guys, even when Loki’s pretending to be a traitor, he doesn’t call himself Laufeyson. STOP CALLING HIM LAUFEYSON IN YOUR TAGS. Also his knife-fighting is awesome.

The Kursed dude’s eyeballs getting sucked out of their sockets was NOT a necessary detail to include.

“You fool, you didn’t listen!” What does Thor mean? What did Loki not listen to? Did Thor tell him that he was only supposed to protect Jane, not him?

Okay so I’m really not sure what the deal is with Loki’s fake death here. I have a couple different theories.

Theory 1: Loki really did get stabbed and really did believe he was dying. After Thor and Jane left to seek shelter from Thor’s uncontrollable grief storm, Loki reverted to his true form (because, dying) and that actually saved his life because Kursed blood isn’t as deadly to the Jotnar as it is to the Aesir, or his vital organs aren’t in the same place anymore, or something. So he was able to heal himself and take advantage of the situation.

Theory 2: Loki never intended to betray Thor, but he always intended to fake his death, both as a way of escaping prison and of avoiding Thanos’s retribution. So as soon as he finished off those four Dark Elves, he turned one of their corpses into a copy of himself and puppeteered it over to stab the Kursed dude and get theatrically killed. It would explain why the Loki who gets stabbed only has a Dark Elf sword and a black hole grenade on him.

I lean more towards theory 1 because I don’t really like the idea that Loki would trick Thor into thinking he was dead the day after their mother died, and also because when they filmed it, they actually meant for this to be Loki’s real death scene, and they only changed it later because test audiences didn’t believe Loki was dead. However, if I put aside my emotions, I have to admit that theory 2 makes more logical sense.

Would Malekith have found the Aether sooner if it hadn’t gotten into Jane? The movie implies pretty strongly that Malekith woke up because the Aether was out of its hiding place.

Mjolnir on the coat hook is such a great gag.

The elevator in Malekith’s ship looks like a spinal column, which is some fantastic design.

Thor’s battle trash talk is always delightful.

PORTAL SHENANIGANS. YESSSSSS.

Poor Mjolnir. It’s trying so hard to get back to Thor. I like to think that when it shatters the glass of that building on its way back up, it’s doing so in frustration.

Hi Jotunheim!

So apparently this isn’t remotely how you get to Greenwich from Charing Cross. Whoops. Maybe that girl was just really flustered at being addressed by Thor and gave him crap directions?

Jane really likes trying to throw herself between an unconscious Thor and a thing that she thinks might kill him.

POETRY. Malekith tried to destroy the Asgardian army by dropping his fleet on them. Now he gets killed by his own ship falling on him.

How’d Loki know about Thor’s line to Odin “There will never be a wiser king than you”?

“I can assure you, it will be absolutely safe here in my collection.” LIAR.

It’s so cool that Chris’s wife is the one who played Jane in the end credits scene. I’m not sure how they failed to do this kiss scene with Natalie in the first place, but whatever.

Every time Thor’s about to show up somewhere in this movie, there’s thunder. :D

Okay so the biggest problems with Thor: The Dark World are that Malekith is the dullest villain in the entire MCU and that Thor kinda doesn’t have a character arc. In a movie where half of his family dies (as far as he knows). How is that even possible? Despite the beautiful funeral, Frigga’s death was really kind of glossed over, and then Loki seemingly dies too, but even though those are very powerful scenes while we’re in them, they don’t leave much of an impact on the rest of the movie. You don’t really feel those losses in the way Thor fights Malekith. Thor should’ve been struggling to stick to the plan instead of just whaling on Malekith blindly with Mjolnir. He should’ve had some breakdown with Jane there to witness it and comfort him. Instead he’s the one comforting Jane when she blames herself for all the loss he’s suffered? No no no. He should’ve either been very emotional, very bent on revenge, or smiling and joking through the pain like he does in Ragnarok and Infinity War. This stoicism is not effective, and it probably contributes to so many people’s (mistaken) belief that, prior to Ragnarok, Thor was a boring character. And Malekith’s side of the battle would’ve been better if it had been personal for him too. He could’ve been more upset at the death of his buddy Algrim, or maybe he had family members who were killed by Bor, which is why he’s so keen on killing members of Asgard’s royal family now. It would’ve been so easy to make this an emotionally intense fight. Instead, it’s merely fun because portal shenanigans. *shrug*

Despite not having much of an arc, Thor is still wonderful. He’s funny, he’s more thoughtful and wise than he’s ever been, he’s gallant, he’s romantic, and he’s getting better and better at working as part of a team and finding solutions besides smashing stuff. Also he makes the best entrances, has awesome armor, and is mesmerizing to watch in battle. I adore him.

Other stuff this movie has going for it. So much more Asgard screentime, even if they cut a few scenes I wish they’d left in. The music is still great. Everything looks gorgeous, and the Dark Elves at least have interesting technology and costumes. No Dutch angles. Plenty of screentime for Heimdall. Every single second of Thor and Loki’s scenes together, being obnoxious bros to each other but still working as a very effective team (heralding all the excellent contentious Brodinson stuff to come in Ragnarok).

#thor the dark world #mcu marathon #thor #loki #infinity war spoilers #kinda

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cap-sweet-and-salty-sadness · 6 years

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brave.

It’s the third story in my series of tropes, inspired by @elby9001 who said that ‘Mistaken for Badass’ is their favourite trope.

Read on AO3

Darcy was enjoying her morning coffee when the world exploded around her. One second, it was all happy birds chirping, the next an explosion nearby was nearly rendering her deaf. Part of the coffee shop fell on them, and Darcy narrowly missed being crushed to death by throwing herself to the side, under a table that barely held on through the impact.

It took her a few seconds to clear her mind, coughing her lungs out because of the dust and her eyes watering. She pushed herself to her knees. She’d lost her glasses, turning her surroundings in a blurring mess.

She could hear other persons moaning in pain beside her, meaning she wasn’t the only survivor. It was her first week in New York and it was already trying to kill her. She hadn’t escaped alien elves just to die crushed to death by a wall, what would her epitaph be then?

Her hand finally found her glasses, and she was just pushing them up the bridge of her nose when the guns started firing. It was directly outside, perhaps a dozen feet away. Darcy could see them now, people with a dark uniform and a mask, walking down the street towards the coffee shop. She crouched with a curse, then crawled to hide behind the counter. The barista was already there, a wound on his head bleeding but otherwise fine. They looked at each other, and at his obvious fear, she felt her own emotions calm down, her mind taking that calm focus that stressful situations would push her in. She was no hero, but she would at least try, goddamnit.

She listened to the footsteps coming closer, glass and wood crunching and cracking under heavy boots. She pressed a finger against her own lips to incite the man to stay silent, her heart beating furiously in her ribcage. She slipped a hand inside her bag to retrieve her taser, overjoyed that she was smart enough to bring it everywhere with her.

She stayed low and went on the other side of the counter, in the opposite direction of where the footsteps were going. Taking a deep breath, she peeped over the side to make sure the armed person had their back to her before making a dash towards them. Only pure luck made her succeed, she was sure, because she shot them in the back just as they noticed her, and fell flat on the floor.

Darcy’s hands were numb, her throat parched. She had to swallow a few times before she muster. “Is everyone okay?”

People began to poke their heads out, then made their way towards her.

“You’re the Black Widow,” someone said in wonder.

“Yeah, she used her spider bites to take down Hydra.”

Darcy blinked in confusion. She had met Black Widow once, and despite the obvious compliment, she knew they had nothing in common. Darcy wasn’t even a redhead.

“Um, no, I’m not-“ But her voice was muffled by another explosion that shook the building they were in.

“We need to get out of here!” The barista screamed, and they all dashed outside. Darcy instead went back to the unconscious person to search their pockets. There wasn’t much in the vest, but she checked their ear and found a communication device. She put it in her own ear.

Honestly, she didn’t understand all of their gibberish that involved too many numbers and different times of the day, but she quickly got that they were after the Avengers, causing havoc to get their attention. That was an all-new way to seek attention, destroying buildings and killing people. Usually making vague posts on Facebook worked.

To what extend they were ready to go, Darcy didn’t want to stay and find out. She grabbed the handgun from the person’s uniform and made her way out by the big hole in the wall. Was it still an in when half of it was outside? Huh, maybe that wasn’t the best time to ask herself that, but then again, Darcy’s adrenaline was so high she could almost vibrate.

The rest of the street was in the same sad state, destroyed buildings and people in frenzy, hurrying to safety. But where was safety? She stayed close to the remaining facades, trying to be stealthy and keeping an eye on her surrounding, but it was pretty clear she was bad at this when someone shot at the ground right before her.

“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot you in the head,” a man said. “I got visual on the Black Widow,” he said in his comm. “Awaiting order.”

Darcy let out a disbelieving chuckle, turning her head to see the man was alone and a few feet away from her. He was wearing thick dark eyewear blocking a good portion of his face. “I think whoever you’re working for should provide you with better glasses, seriously.”

“Shut up.”

She raised her hand, shaking it. “Can you see this? Doesn’t the evil corporation you’re working for cover your eye insurances?”

“Fucking hell, I swear I’ll shoot you if you don’t-”

She half turned and shot him in the shoulder, with the gun he apparently never saw in her other hand. At least she tried to aim for his shoulder. Instead she got him in the side of the neck, and in surprise, he dropped his own gun. Sprays of blood gushed out of the wound with every beat of his heart, and she watched him fall in the middle of the street.

She took a step forward, her legs wobbly, and turned around again at something thumping on the ground behind her. Captain America had fallen from the sky.

Never in her life was she happier to see the blue, red and white colours. They’d talked before when they happened to bump each other, before Darcy figured out who he was, thanks to a certain Sam who was amused by her starry eyes. Steve had always been very kind, his smile as rewarding as his posterior.

From the looks of it, he’d witnessed a part of what happened.

“I’m not the Black Widow,” she said in lieu of greeting as he approached her. He was out of breath, as if he’d ran to get here. “But you work with her, so you should be aware of that.”

“I am, but what you just did there, it was brave.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, but then she was smirking, the gun heavy in her hand. She couldn’t let go of it, though, not any time soon. “Aren’t you supposed to say ‘Follow me if you want to live’?”

He was confused, so she continued. “You haven’t seen Terminator?”

“There’s a lot of movies I have yet to watch. Are you okay?” And he brushed dust from her shoulders, gently checking her for any injury that required immediate attention. She grabbed his gloved hand to stop him, not sure for how long she could remain calm. She needed to sit down and cry for some time. She heard something coming from his cowl, and he huffed in slight annoyance.

“Stop pestering me, and finish the job. I’m with her, Thor,” he told in his comm before turning it off. Well, she didn’t doubt she would hear from the other big blond guy later on, if only to receive one of his bear hugs. She would need it.

“I’m not hurt,” she said. “Can we get out of here?”

He squeezed her hand before letting go, and Darcy was tempted to cling on to it. “Let’s go that way, the Avengers tower is nearby.” He stayed close, watching her as they started walking. That was very sweet of him, when he could let her go on her own while he continued to fight.

She talked without really thinking, and she later would blame it on the shock quickly taking over. “If I live through this, let’s watch Terminator together.”

He smiled. “I’ll make sure you stay alive, then.”

#shieldshock #starcy #steve rogers #darcy lewis #steve x darcy #steve rogers x darcy lewis #mistaken for badass #fanfiction trope #ao3 #marvel #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #my writing #kalisca #darcyland

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jackson38toh · 5 years

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Was ‘pin money’ really for pins?

Q: An article in the Guardian about sexism in the workplace says, “Women are no longer routinely told to their faces that they’re only working for ‘pin money,’ that they should be ashamed of taking work from men with families to feed.” Where does the term “pin money” come from? Did it once refer literally to real pins?

A: No, “pin money” was never about pins in the ordinary sense of the word. The use of “pin” in this 17th-century expression makes it sound more demeaning than it actually was.

Today “pin money” simply means a trivial amount of money, perhaps enough for incidentals. And since the days of the Suffragists, it’s been used in a belittling way to demean the wages of working women.

But you’re asking about the historical meaning of “pin money,” which in its earliest sense meant “a (usually annual) sum allotted to a woman for clothing and other personal expenses; esp. such an allowance provided for a wife’s private expenditure,” to quote the Oxford English Dictionary.

The phrase was first recorded, the OED says, in a suit brought against Lord Leigh by Lady Leigh in 1674: “On difference between him and his lady about settlement of 200 l. [pounds] per annum, pin-mony” (from a document later collected in the legal digest English Reports in Law and Equity, 1908).

The dictionary’s second citation clearly demonstrates that “pin money” wasn’t about pins. In a scene from John Vanbrugh’s comedy The Relapse; or, Virtue in Danger, first performed in 1696, a young heiress and her nurse discuss the lady’s upcoming nuptials (we’re expanding the dialogue here):

Miss Hoyden: For this I must say for my Lord … he’s as free as an open House at Christmas. For this very Morning, he told me, I shou’d have two hundred a Year to buy Pins. Now, Nurse, if he gives me two hundred a Year to buy Pins; What do you think he’ll give me to buy fine Petticoats?

Nurse: A, my dearest. … These Londoners have got a Gibberidge [gibberish] with ’em, would confound a Gypsey. That which they call Pin-money, is to buy their Wives every thing in the varsal [whole] World, down to their very shoe-tyes: Nay, I have heard Folks say, That some Ladies, if they will have Gallants, as they call ’um; are forc’t to find them out of their Pin-money too.

We can’t resist adding this example from our own reading. Near the end of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mrs. Bennet congratulates her daughter Elizabeth, newly engaged to Mr. Darcy:

“Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin money, what jewels, what carriages you will have!”

What did pins have to do with a woman’s personal expenses?

Oxford Dictionaries Online, a standard dictionary, says the “pin” here originally referred to a jeweled or ornamental fastener, and denoted a wife’s clothing and other personal expenses.

The OED, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, raises an interesting possibility: the French word for “pins,” épingles, had long been used in a related sense.

In 15th-century France the plural épingles meant a “gift given to a woman on completion of a business transaction with her husband.” And in the mid-17th-century the French used it to mean “money given to a woman in recognition of some service she has rendered.”

In English, the plural “pins” was used similarly in the 16th century, a century before the expression “pin money” was recorded in OED citations.

This example appears in a will made in 1542 by John Nevile, Lord Latimer: “I give my said doughter Margarett my lease of the parsonadge of Kirkdall Churche … to by her pynnes withal” (from Testamenta Eboracensia, Vol. VI, 1902, a selection of wills registered in York).

And in 1640, Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, made this legacy: “Which Rent I haue bestowed on my daughter Mary to buy her pins” (from the earl’s diaries, autobiographical notes, and other writings, published as The Lismore Papers in 1886).

As you can see, the plural “pins” had a special meaning—a woman’s expenses—before “pin money” was first used to mean her personal funds.

And, as the dictionary’s citations show, the money involved (whether referred to as “pins” or “pin money”) was often considerable and was taken very seriously by the wealthy—and their lawyers.

This quotation is from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (Vol. II, 1766): “If she has any pinmoney or separate maintenance, it is said she may dispose of her savings thereout by testament, without the control of her husband.”

The legal encyclopedia Halsbury’s Laws of England has this historical note in a 1979 edition, “Pin money was … usually provided for in a settlement by a yearly rent charge on the husband’s real estate.”

And in his book Road to Divorce: England, 1530-1987, Lawrence Stone writes: “By the terms of a divorce bill, the wife forfeited claim to a return of her marriage portion, and also to her pin-money.”

This meaning of “pin money” is described by the OED as “historical,” meaning that it’s a usage of the past. It faded away toward the end of the 19th century.

But the phrase survives, according to the OED, in an “extended use” that developed in the early 1700s: “a trivial amount of money; (also) spending money, esp. for inessential items and incidental expenses.”

The dictionary’s earliest example, dated 1702, is from A Compleat History of Europe, a multi-volume work by the Welsh writer David Jones: “I am ashamed to name for what a Pin Money his Books were sold.”

That extended sense is now the usual one, as seen in this more recent OED example: “That’s pin money for a company of Sears’ size, but every little bit helps these days” (Toronto Globe & Mail, Nov. 14, 1992).

The OED has no separate entry for a more specific, derogatory use of “pin money” that developed around the turn of the 20th century. In this sense, “pin money” was used to trivialize the earnings of working women as merely incidental to a family’s support.

For example, the phrase “pin-money clerk” was used to mean a woman who supposedly did office work to provide herself with trifles, not because she had to earn a living. The term cropped up during a time when Suffragists were campaigning not only for votes for women, but for wider employment of women.

In January 1912 a British quarterly, the Living Age, ran an article deploring the “disastrous” economic effects of Suffragists who encouraged more women to work outside the home: “The ‘pin-money clerk’ is blamed for the lowering of wage that cheap female labor has been responsible for in the clerical market.”

This notion was so deeply engrained that in November 1929, Britain’s Minister for Employment, J. H. Thomas, delivered what was later described as his “pin money speech.”

“It is not only uneconomic and unfair, but against the nation’s interests for women to work for what they call pin money, and deprive other people, of legitimate work,” he said. (The remark was reported in newspapers in Britain, Australia, and the US.)

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from Blog – Grammarphobia https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2019/03/pin-money.html

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